Plot[ edit ] Details of contemporary small-town American life are embroidered upon a description of an annual rite known as "the lottery".
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In a small village of about residents, the locals are in an excited yet nervous mood on June Children gather stones, as the adult townsfolk assemble for their annual event, which in the local tradition is apparently practiced to ensure a good harvest Old Man Warner quotes an old proverb: "Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon". However, some other villages have already link the lottery, and rumors are spreading that a village Shidley north is considering doing likewise.
The lottery preparations start the night before, with coal merchant Mr. Summers and postmaster Mr. Graves drawing up a list of all the extended families in town and preparing a set of paper slips, one per family, All are blank except one, later revealed to be marked with a black dot. The slips are folded and placed in a black wooden box, which in turn is stored in a safe at Mr. Summers' office until the lottery is scheduled to begin.
In the morning of the lottery, the townspeople gather shortly before 10 a. First, the heads of the extended families each draw one slip from the box, but wait to unfold them until visit web page the slips have been drawn. Bill Hutchinson gets the marked slip, meaning that his family has been chosen.
His wife Tessie protests that Mr. Summers rushed him through the drawing, but the other townspeople dismiss her complaint. Since the Hutchinson family consists of only one household, a second drawing to choose one household within the family is skipped. For the final drawing, one slip is placed in the box for each member of the household: Bill, Tessie, and their three children. Each of the five draws a slip, and Tessie gets the marked one. The townspeople pick up the gathered stones and begin throwing them at her as she screams about the injustice of the lottery. Themes[ edit ] One of the major ideas of "The Lottery" is that of a scapegoat.
The Lottery Short Story Analysis
The act of stoning someone to death yearly purges the town of the bad and allows for the good. This is hinted in Traditionn references to agriculture. The story also speaks of mob psychology and the idea that people can abandon reason and act cruelly if they are part of a large group of people behaving in the same manner.
The idyllic setting of the story also demonstrates that violence and evil can take place anywhere and in any context. This also shows how people can turn on each other so easily. When or where it is set specifically, is never said, leaving some to consider it science fiction. I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives. In a lecture printed in Thw collection Come Along with MeJackson recalled the hate mail she received in [1] One of the most terrifying aspects of publishing stories and books is the realization that they are going to be read, and read by strangers.
I had never fully realized this before, although I had of course in my imagination dwelt lovingly upon the thought of the millions and millions of people who were going Here be uplifted and enriched and delighted by the stories I wrote. It had simply never occurred to me that these millions and millions of people might be so far from being uplifted that they would sit down and write me letters I was downright scared to open; of the three-hundred-odd letters that I received that summer I can count only thirteen that spoke kindly to me, and they were mostly from friends. Even my mother scolded me: "Dad and I did not care at all for your story in The New Shrley, she wrote sternly; "it does seem, dear, that this gloomy kind of story is what all you young people think about these days.
Comparison Of Literature: The Cask Of Amontillado And The Lottery
Why don't you write something to cheer people up? That summer she regularly took home Traditikn to 12 forwarded letters each day. She also received weekly packages from The New Yorker containing letters and questions addressed to the magazine or editor Harold Rossplus carbon copies of the magazine's responses mailed to letter writers. Curiously, there are three main themes which dominate the letters of that first summer—three themes which might be identified as bewilderment, speculation and plain old-fashioned abuse. In the years since then, during which the story has been anthologized, dramatized, televised, and even—in one completely mystifying transformation—made into a ballet, the tenor of letters I receive has changed.]
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